Archive - May 28, 2022

  The signs that the special role for the Peace Corps in foreign aid was in trouble were all over Washington. Wofford ran into Ralph Dungan in the White House mess (Wofford was then a Special Assistant to the President on Civil Rights) and Dungan told him the Peace Corps would be a subdivision of the new AID. “Not if Sarge has anything to say about it,” Wofford tossed off, half joking, but also firmly believing Shriver walked on water. The truth was that all these “new guys” Shriver brought in to work for the Peace Corps believed Sarge could get anything he wanted from the White House. But Shriver was scheduled to leave D.C. and the U.S. Who would carry the fight that was developing in D.C.? Before leaving for his ’round the world trip to secure placements for PCVs, Shriver lobbied Sorensen, Dungan, and Labouisse, trying to persuade . . .

  REMEMBERING THE CREATION OF THE PEACE CORPS ON THIS MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND   This is an early blog I posted on  the website Marian Beil set up some thirty years ago. It focuses on the creation of the agency. JC  • Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo Peace Corps! At the time of Shriver’s February 22, 1961 memorandum to President Kennedy — stating that the Peace Corps should be established as a semi-autonomous agency — there was a lot of professional resistance to the whole idea of sending young Americans overseas to do good. Career diplomats like Elliot O. Briggs described the Peace Corps’ team cry as “Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo. Let’s go out and wreak some good on the natives,” as Wofford reports in his book, Of Kennedys & Kings [1992]. Throughout the State Department diplomats were indifferent to hostile to the whole idea of a Peace Corps. But not Dean Rusk, Kennedy’s new Secretary . . .